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How decentralization could have prevented the global Microsoft meltdown

The recent Microsoft failure shows how vulnerable centralized systems are.

The widespread collapse of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which disrupted key services worldwide, is being touted as a vindication of blockchain and decentralized technology.

Zain Cheng, the chief technology officer of Web3 development firm Horizen Labs, told Cointelegraph the Microsoft outage “underscores the vulnerabilities of centralized systems, where single points of failure can lead to widespread disruption.”

As Cheng points out, the disruption was indeed widespread. From July 18–19, businesses, supermarkets, broadcasters, airlines and banks ground to a halt as 8.5 million systems encountered the blue screen of death.

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Microsoft blames Crowdstrike meltdown on 2009 European Union deal

The security incident affected 8.5 million Windows systems worldwide as commercial operations were hit with the “blue screen of death.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, a Microsoft spokesperson blamed the recent Crowdstrike failure on a 2009 regulatory deal between Microsoft and the European Union.

The spokesperson claimed Microsoft agreed to give external security developers the same level of access to interact with the software as Microsoft, paving the way for critical bugs.

Patrick Wardle, the CEO of DoubleYou, explained that monolithic ecosystems like Apple’s MacOS are more resistant to such critical errors because of their walled-off architecture. In 2020, Apple revoked similar security clearances for its operating system, insulating it from third-party security failures and coding conflicts.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Customers Report Cascade of Failures As Banks Hammered by Massive Computer Outage

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Customers Report Cascade of Failures As Banks Hammered by Massive Computer Outage

US banks are scrambling to recover from a massive computer outage that’s disrupting financial transactions around the world. Customers at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are reporting major, ongoing outages, according to the network tracking service DownDetector. The historic outage, which has hammered banks, airlines outage and scores of other businesses, was triggered […]

The post JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Customers Report Cascade of Failures As Banks Hammered by Massive Computer Outage appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

From Microstrategy to Gamestop — Backed Introduces 5 New Tokenized Equities

From Microstrategy to Gamestop — Backed Introduces 5 New Tokenized EquitiesBacked, a firm specializing in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, has launched five new tokenized equities. The newly introduced tokens represent stocks of prominent companies, offering non-U.S. investors exposure to these assets via blockchain technology. RWA Firm Backed Launches 5 Tokenized Stocks Backed‘s new tokenized equities include bMSFT (Microsoft), bGME (Gamestop), bMSTR (Microstrategy), bTSLA (Tesla), and […]

Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

Judge dismisses coders’ DMCA claims against Microsoft, OpenAI and GitHub

The partial dismissal indicates complainants failed to demonstrate that GitHub reproduces human-created code.

The judge overseeing a billion-dollar class action lawsuit against GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft over the alleged unauthorized use of intellectual property (IP) to train the “GitHub Copilot” artificial intelligence (AI) coding software has partially dismissed the claims against the defendants.

This marks a win for big tech and the generative AI industry, which currently faces a number of related lawsuits.

The lawsuit’s complainants had alleged that OpenAI “scraped” GitHub and used human-created coding snippets to train GitHub Copilot without permission, compensation, or credit. According to the lawsuit, Copilot reproduced human-generated code line-for-line and, as such, the complainants were apparently seeking compensation in the amount of $1 billion.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and more filed SEC warnings that AI could ruin business

The reasons ranged from cannibalizing their own businesses to releasing potentially inferior products.

Over a dozen of the biggest names in the United States technology industry have filed “risk factor” reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicating that artificial intelligence (AI) could threaten company finances. 

While not uncommon, these risk reports outline internal thinking when it comes to the potential pitfalls of dedicating resources and funds to the development of nascent technologies such as AI.

Those filing warnings, according to a report from Bloomberg, include Adobe, Dell, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Uber and at least a few others.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

Softbank lost 99% when the dotcom bubble burst, now it’s all-in on AI

Softbank Group stocks reached an all-time-high on a market capitalization of $97.2 billion.

Softbank Group Corporation’s stock rose 1.5% to reach an all-time-high on Tuesday, July 2. The high mark comes just a few years after the company saw its shares plummet amid the closure of numerous high-profile tech startups, including WeWork, and a tech sector crackdown by the Chinese government.

Analysts have largely attributed the Japanese company’s recent uptick to its pivot toward artificial intelligence and the performance of its computing subsidiary Arm Holdings.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, company founder and chairman Masayoshi Son recently announced that Softbank would pursue greater involvement in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

Big Tech produced more carbon since 2019 than all Bitcoin mining ever

U.S. tech firms made huge commitments to “net zero” carbon emissions — but that was before ChatGPT hit the scene.

Big Tech’s carbon footprint continues to balloon as generative artificial intelligence products and services proliferate, with Amazon alone producing more carbon dioxide emissions per year than all the Bitcoin mining in the world. 

According to the data, Big Tech has released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since 2019 — when most of the largest U.S. tech firms began disclosing their emissions — than Bitcoin has since 2014.

It’s virtually impossible to calculate the exact amount of carbon dioxide produced by Bitcoin operations throughout the globe. To the best of our knowledge, no research team has access to power grid usage and cost data from all the countries involved in Bitcoin mining.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

AI ‘Skeleton Key’ attack found by Microsoft could expose personal, financial data

Aside from being wary about which AI services you use, there are other steps organizations can take to protect against having data exposed.

Microsoft researchers recently uncovered a new form of “jailbreak” attack they’re calling a “Skeleton Key” that’s capable of removing the protections that keep generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems from outputting dangerous and sensitive data. 

According to a Microsoft Security blog post, the Skeleton Key attack works by simply prompting a generative AI model with text asking it to augment its encoded security features.

In one example given by the researchers, an AI model is asked to generate a recipe for a “Molotov Cocktail” — a simple firebomb popularized during World War II — and the model refused, citing safety guidelines.

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Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June

Pantera Capital Calls Solana the ‘Mac OS of Blockchains,’ Highlights Architecture Benefits and Growing Adoption

Pantera Capital Calls Solana the ‘Mac OS of Blockchains,’ Highlights Architecture Benefits and Growing AdoptionPantera Capital, an institutional asset manager focused on blockchain technology, has called Solana the “Mac OS of blockchains” in its latest blockchain letter. The firm details that the rise of Solana over Ethereum is reminiscent of what Microsoft experienced when Apple entered the market, highlighting Solana’s growing retail adoption and architectural advantages. Pantera Capital States […]

Salvadoran Basic Goods Basket Rose to Historic Highs in June